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I HAVE KNOWN NEIL GAIMAN FOR MAYBE THREE DECADES NOW, AND SOMEtime near the start of our friendship began to notice that Neil often had the capacity to see all around whomever he was talking to. That is, he very much seemed to have taken in their motives, hidden and otherwise, and attitudes, and most often not only to have understood the point toward which he or she were struggling, but to have reached that point ten or fifteen minutes in advance of the other party. Throughout, he expressed his understanding of all that was going on with steadfast and unflagging equanimity, also with great personal decency. This is not the Boy Scouts, and real personal decency actually has no place at all in the values and qualities we most celebrate, but it is nonetheless worth remarking when it (so unexpectedly) appears.
I think I first took in this quality of Neil's during a conversation in the concierge-floor bar of a convention hotel in California maybe twenty years...